In his modestly entitled Diary of a Genius, Salvador Dali dismisses Alexander Calder’s mobiles by remarking that the least you can expect of a sculpture is that it doesn’t move. But, never one to be bothered by contradictions, he had a lot of respect for the “New Vision” of the ex-Bauhaus artist and designer László Moholy-Nagy who pioneered kinetic sculpture with his 1930 stage prop consisting of a light that projected the shadows of its moving parts. Budapest’s University of Art and Design is named in his honour, and one of its graduates, Krisztina Szucs, is the joint winner of the data visualization contest we announced last September.

If your view of data visualization is similar to that of Dali’s concerning Calder, go here. If not, click on the image below to see how Krisztina and Maté Cziner present the financial return on education, based on data from the 568 pages and 1.5 kilos of the OECD’s amusingly entitled Education at a Glance.

The judges were Simon Rogers, editor of the Guardian’s Datablog and Datastore; Charlene Manuel from www.visualizing.org; Andreas Schleicher, Deputy Director for Education and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the OECD’s Secretary-General; and Anthony Gooch, OECD Director of Public Affairs and Communications.

They chose Krisztina and Maté’s graph from over 30 entries because it “does a great job of breaking down the complex interplay between costs and returns into a form that is easy to compare”. And also because “instead of the many-country approach used by most entries, the project takes a detailed look at public vs. private and men vs. women for three selected countries (which you can change)”.

The judges also awarded an honorable mention to That’s Edu, by Carlo Zapponi, for its friendly design and intuitive interface.

Congratulations to the winners, and check out the other contestants too, to see what a hard job our judges had.